Prostrakan is predicting it will reach profitability by the end of the year after posting a 40 per cent hike in revenues in the first quarter.

The pharmaceutical company expects to double its European revenues to more than £100million in 2009.

Sales of its breakthrough pain medication Abstral are expected to reach more than £50m with further launches in France and Spain planned in the coming months.

Top-selling product, calcium deficiency treatment Adcal-D3, has grown by 20 per cent in the first three months of the year, despite a 3.9 per cent price decrease following the UK Department of Health's Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme.

Chief executive Dr Wilson Totten said: "ProStrakan has made a really strong start to 2009 both in terms of trading and in further developing the business.

"Product sales are 40 per cent up on last year. Sancuso and Abstral have made very encouraging progress, Fortigel has been submitted for US approval and our development pipeline will result in two further NDAs being filed in the US this year.

"The strength of our performance in the first four months of 2009 reinforces our confidence in achieving our stated target of reaching break even in the closing months of 2009.

"We have also acquired a number of products over the last few years, so the cost base of the company is relatively fixed. So what we are looking to do now is drive sales to the point where we have more income than we have expenditure. The European business, which really drove our growth last year with £56m in total revenues, is still growing very strongly, rising by around 25 per cent again in the first quarter.

"That means in the first quarter, including sales in the US, we have grown by roughly 40 per cent over this time last year, which means we are well on track to become profitable by the end of the year." For the four months from January to the end of April, sales of the company's first commercialised product in the US market, the Sancuso anti-nausea patch, have grown to around 850 a week.

The firm has also increased the number of American sales staff to 82 as it looks to capitalise on the first of its products to be given Food and Drug Administration approval. The company's testosterone replacement therapy, Fortigel, was re-filed in the US last year, and is currently awaiting New Drug Application approval.

ProStrakan will also file NDAs in the US in mid 2009 for pain relief products, Abstral and Cellegesic.

Market analysts predict $400m in US sales for ProStrakan's four products when launched over the next 18 months..